The Bicycling World, Vol 52, No 8
Articles in this issue
- The trade laughs at an overshrewd Western bicycle-factory man who wired several parts and material houses that he would call "if you pay expenses," then visited them all on one trip and collected rail fare from each; the same man once tried to dodge the Bicycling World's $2 subscription by asking a dealer to remail his used copy.
- The committee named at the jobbers' convention to weigh a manufacturers' association was called to New York for Wednesday, but a misunderstanding over the date left only proxies; nothing can move until President Lloyd of the jobbers' association is heard from, says Secretary Scheffey.
- On 31 October the G. W. Cole Company shipped an entire carload of "Three in One" oil, 66,240 bottles, to Bryte, Coates & Campbell Co. of San Francisco, routed by water around South America on the American-Hawaiian Steamship Line.
- The B. F. Goodrich Co. has dropped the name Single Tube Tires, Ltd. from its London house and trades again under its own name; Arthur E. Lumsden, once Chicago's most prominent cyclist, manages the depot.
- George W. Sherman of the Hendee Manufacturing Company sails for a six weeks' trip to Porto Rico and Jamaica, taking an Indian tricar in answer to inquiries from those islands.
- The Miami Cycle and Manufacturing Company of Middletown, Ohio, lists the 1906 Racycle's new frame construction, wide-flanged hubs, fork crowns, biplane sprockets with longer teeth and thicker 1-8 chains, plus Persons's Maximus saddle and a new finish; the lower-priced "stepbrothers" line is now built in the Racycle factory instead of under contract.
- For 1906 the American Motor Company of Brockton, Mass., will market three models: the 3 horsepower belt-driven Marsh at $150, the chain-driven Metz at $210, and the two-cylinder 4 horsepower Marsh-Metz on G. & J. tires at $275.
- A German firm's motorcycle engine encloses the inlet within an annular exhaust valve surrounding a hollow tube, and houses the float-less spray carburetter inside the exhaust valve itself, warming the inlet charge while cooling the exhaust seat and making the carburetter integral with the motor.
- Humber, Ltd.'s balance sheet shows net profit of $32,090 against $37,500 of preferred dividends, a $4,810 deficit covered by $10,670 brought forward; by contrast the Triumph Cycle Co. of Coventry cleared $58,695 and wrote $25,000 off goodwill.
- Trade changes: Harry Teed and Frank Murphy start in business at Springfield, Mo.; L. B. Wyman of Topeka, Kan., sells to Charles Matthews and Paul Mulvane; Charles Bouchard removes premises at Swanton, Vt.; and Olin W. Taft of Little Falls, N. Y., files in bankruptcy with the Utica Cycle Co. among his creditors.
- Fourth Assistant Postmaster General De Graw rules that rural free delivery carriers may not regularly use bicycles, motorcycles or automobiles, only occasionally to rest their horses; the Bicycling World prints his letter and argues the bicycle is being made a scapegoat for unreliable automobiles.
- A motorcyclist recommends everyday vaseline rubbed in each morning as better than any grease remover, washed off at night with soft water, soap and cornmeal; another advises paraffine worked into the palm before soap and a nail brush to shift rubber solution.
- Compression leaks are best found by brushing a heavy soap-and-water lather over all doubtful joints and watching for fine bubbles; failing that, a less delicate test uses heavy oil the same way.
- Twelve teams are signed for New York's six-day race at Madison Square Garden, 3-9 December, including "Tommy" Hall with Matt Downey, Vanderstuyft and Stol, Gougoltz with Vanoni, Dussot with Doerflinger, Trousselier with Decaux, Agraz with Fred Castro, Root with Joe Fogler, the Bedell brothers, MacLean with James F. Moran, and Hollister with Norman Hopper.
- A leader on the endless argument over correct riding position, holding that wheel base, crank length, saddle height and bar extension are the maker's business and that a month's riding, not plumb lines or abstruse mathematics, settles the rider's own adjustment.
- A leader attacking the Postoffice Department's order suppressing bicycles on rural routes, calling the stated reasons illogical, a brief for the horse trade, and a rebuke to the very carriers whose cycling quickened the mail service.
- P. Warren Noble, a British mechanical engineer, calls "completely erroneous" the notion that a motor bicycle crystallizes its frame and needs renewing each season: steel crystallizes only under transverse loading, and weldless tubing is too distinctly fibrous for it.
- The Brooklyn Motorcycle Club may use Ocean Parkway from 8 to 9:30 on Thanksgiving morning, 30th inst., for a twenty-five-mile handicap under F. A. M. sanction, F. A. Baker chairman, starting ahead of the Century Road Club of America's Cycle Path Handicap.
- An English variation on home trainer contests has riders on rollers propel miniature bicycles round a diminutive track instead of pushing the hands of a clock indicator, giving spectators the semblance of a real race.
- Officials of the Automobile Club of America have trustworthy word from official sources that New York State's $50,000,000 good-roads amendment carried overwhelmingly, though the result has not been promulgated nearly two weeks after the election.
- David L. Carroll's appeal from a $2 fine, backed by the F. A. M., against the Reidsville, N. C., bylaw forbidding motorcycles on the streets, is postponed to the January term of the Superior Court; even Reidsville papers doubt the law will stand.
- E. Tomlinson, manager of the Havemeyer Oil Company, explains the "fire test" and "carbon test" of a lubricant and warns that a thin oil of proper fire test suits an engine better than a thick one, since viscosity at normal temperature says nothing about body at cylinder heat.
- A cyclist shopping a New York storage company for a second-hand motorcycle is shown dusty flat-tired Ramblers, Marshes, a Tourist and a "powerful French racer" minus batteries, is promised forty to seventy miles an hour and a room where machines "come out all right," and is laughed at by Jakey and the proprietor for owning Reading Standards.
- Only ten started the New York Motorcycle Club's postponed regularity and speed judgment contest from New York City to Bedford, N. Y., clocked unseen at six points to a fifteen-mile pace; R. H. Bartsch on an Indian beat J. F. McLaughlin's Orient by a single point, and one-armed M. E. Toepel was three minutes out over sixty-one miles.
- The Buffalo Racing Cyclists' Union and the regiments have buried the hatchet after last winter's disputes drove the union's riders out on strike and nearly killed indoor flat floor racing in Buffalo.
- Nominations for representative to the National Assembly, L. A. W.: Quincy Kilby, W. B. Everett, Alonzo D. Peck, Arthur P. Benson and Charles W. Pierce for Massachusetts; L. P. Cowell, Edward F. Hill, J. C. Howard, H. C. Wynn and H. W. Bullard for New York; Nelson H. Gibbs and others for District 11.
- William E. Samuelson of Salt Lake City, who styles himself the unpaced king, sailed for Australia, and report has it the National Cycling Association is to suspend him for life over a crooked deal its officials refuse to disclose.
- At the Paris winter track on Sunday, 5th inst., Nat Butler beat Robert Walthour in an hour paced race with Darragon third, covering 77 kilometres 971 metres, about 48 miles 250 yards.
- The referee's investigation of the protests from the Philadelphia-Atlantic City record run of 29 October finds E. Nelson only took a tandem to ask the way over a road he had never ridden, so his 3 hours 15 minutes stands; Ed. Broomfield of Atlantic City took the time prize from scratch in 3:29:35.
- An English motorcyclist reports on holding back with engine compression instead of a brake: one cylinder gives only one compression stroke every other revolution, cutting the spark also lifts the valve on most American machines, and the practice makes belts leave their pulleys and chains climb the sprockets.
- A Massachusetts case pending since 1903 is settled: George R. Clinton, thrown when his wheel struck a hole while passing a car on Broadway, Revere, sued the town for $5,000 and a fifth session jury awarded him $1,000.
- At the frost-encrusted St. Louis meet on Saturday, 11th, John D. Hurck on an Indian won the five-mile motor bicycle race from twenty-odd starters, with Richard Hurck and William Chrisinger next; Malcolm P. Castle on the Geer Cycle Co.'s 5 horsepower Green Egg finished a poor fourth.
- Bicycle and motor bicycle races on 19 and 26 November will be a feature of the Texas State Fair at San Antonio, with a State championship series scored five points to a winner and a diamond and gold medal for the champion.
- An old time cyclist recounts being goaded at a roadhouse into wagering he could scorch past bicycle policemen unarrested; he charged two of them head down at the foot of a hill, swerved by so closely one growled that he would break his neck, and neither gave chase.
- An explanation that a chain's pitch is the distance between the centres of adjacent rollers or blocks, and therefore between adjacent sprocket teeth; long pitch means fewer parts but a more irregular polygonal drive, so the old one-inch chains are now conceded inferior to half-inch and five-eighths except for racing.
- A method from abroad for gauging lubricating oils: heat a pane of glass to various temperatures, hold it at 45 degrees and run samples over it; the oil that runs farthest without evaporating under the greatest heat is the most suitable.
- Motorcyclists who bought hot-weather oil should change back before the thermometer gums it in the tank; fire is too risky and running the engine may seize it, so hot water is the safe thaw, one rider using two rubber hot water bags, while thin gas engine oil needs lubricating about twice as often.
- The old argument over Sunday riding is revived in England with a section of the clergy calling the bicycle a hindrance to worship; one pastor posted a notice at a nearby inn welcoming cyclists in cycling dress and telling them they do not sin in cycling on Sunday.
- Councilman Baccus of Oakland, Cal., has introduced an ordinance to ban sidewalk riding and compel bells and lights; the sidewalk clause rankles because the streets are poor, while a crusade against open-muffler motorcycle scorchers is enriching the city treasury about $10 a day.
- New York's motorcycle police had the Police Commissioner's leave for their ten-mile race on the Coney Island cycle path but discovered too late that a Park Commissioner's permit was also needed, so the race is put off a week.
- German sprinters Bader and Arend, racing at Odessa, were shut up in Warsaw three days by the railway strike; refusing a motor car at 600 roubles, they disguised themselves as a Russian student and a sailor and smuggled aboard a hired Vistula steamer to Thorn, the captain bleeding the party until the cost reached $50 a head.
- Two bicycle races were the feature of the first indoor regimental games at the Thirteenth's armory in Brooklyn on Saturday, 11th inst.: O. Becker won the one-mile handicap off fifty yards in 2:26, and O. J. Devine beat Gus Perden from scratch in the two-mile in 5:01 4-5.
- The Roy Wheelmen's first annual entertainment and ball at Tammany Hall on Friday, 24th inst., will open with roller races that amount to the home trainer championship of New York, each metropolitan club sending its best rider after a week of trials.
- John Fox, one of the smallest Tiger Wheelmen, ran away with the club's ten-mile handicap championship event at Jamaica on Long Island on Sunday, 12th inst., from the 7-minute limit; V. Trebay was second, and "Hoodoo" George Hunter made best time of 31:31 off 2 minutes.
- A satirical verse, credited to the Irish Cyclist, on a record breaker whose "Zero" machine, its tires, chain and "Quintuple" gear makers all advertised the feat without mentioning Tutt, until he complains they have annexed all the credit.
- Claims abstracted from recent grants: Ernst G. Hoffman's ball-grinding machine (803,164), Diedrich Stahlhut's fan attachment for bicycles (803,635), Arthur S. Allen's cycle tire of india rubber and intermeshed wire coils (803,658), Clarkington W. Caterson's armored tire (803,989), and Manley H. Blakeslee's sectional pneumatic tire (804,088).